Back from a workshop at UQAM

Just back from Montreal, where I was invited by Destiny Tchehouali, Professor of Communication, and Michèle Rioux, Professor of Political Science, both at UQAM, to present the first findings of a study that we’re conducting jointly with the UNESCO Chair in Communication and Technology during a research workshop organised by the LATICCE research lab as part of the Mois de la Francophonie. This gave us the opportunity to share our work and discuss the latest advances in this field with both academic researchers and industry experts.

The study, to be published in early spring, examines the visibility of Canadian titles on major SVODs in France (Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+), aiming to provide an initial state-of-play of their discoverability. In addition, a focus on TV5MONDEplus, a streaming platform specialising in the broadcasting of French-language programmes internationally, was carried out to diagnose the way in which content is promoted according to its geographical origin. We took this opportunity to make recommendations for improving its interface, based on our observations regarding the promotion of its content and our expertise in this area.

The study also incorporates a new kind of visual analysis of the homepages, employing heat maps to highlight the visibility of specific categories of titles, such as nationality and language. These heat maps reveal significant disparities between services, with homepages differing from one to another and one of the main findings was to show the existence of dedicated locations reserved for certain categories of content, which are more or less discoverable to the user.

We hope that this initiative will lead to a more ambitious study of the visibility of Canadian and Quebecois titles in Canada. Mathieu Lacombe, Quebec's Minister of Culture and Communications, recently reiterated the importance of making French-language titles discoverable on streaming platforms during his visit to Europe: ‘We need to make sure that, on Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime, there is of course all the content that is currently available, but also home-grown productions, and that these are easily “discoverable”, meaning that they can be accessed easily.’

I'd like to thank Michèle Rioux and Destiny Tchehouali for their invitation and all the participants. We look forward to publishing this study and continuing our collaboration in the coming months.